


Herding Cats

by Random_Scribbling



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Fluff, Inspired By Tumblr, Mad Scientists, Platonic Relationships, School, Scientist Wrangling, Team Bonding, Team Fluff, Team as Family, everyone needs sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 06:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14731380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_Scribbling/pseuds/Random_Scribbling
Summary: AKA Five times Fred helped his team and one time they helped him. Fred may not be a scientist, but he is extremely good at managing scientists and reminding them to eat at semi-regular intervals.





	Herding Cats

~O~

Tadashi

It has taken five hours, but Tadashi is finally in the zone. The coding is speaking to him in way that it rarely does, lines of green text scrolling out from under his fingers like thread on a loom, weaving together what will be his masterpiece!

…If it doesn’t wig out and hit him in the face again.

Music from his phone blocking out sound, windows tinted against daylight, Tadashi is so into the groove that he only comes out of it when the music abruptly stops. He jerks, glancing over, and relaxes. It’s just Fred, wandering over and plucking Tadashi’s phone from the dock with ease of long practice. Fred guesses Tadashi’s code in about four tries (Hiro’s birthday backwards) and starts idly flipping through the photos.

“You know that it’s considered rude to go through someone’s phone without asking,” Tadashi teases, a smile quirking his lips.

“I never knew that,” Fred responds sarcastically, clapping a hand to his face dramatically. “Tell me Tadashi-sensei, do you have any other pearls of wisdom?”

Tadashi rolls his eyes. “What do you want, Fred?” His eyes flicker from Fred to his computer. He’s no where close to being done with this code, but if he just has a few more minutes…

Tadashi is already reaching for the computer when his phone is shoved under his nose, a photo of Hiro’s latest experiment pulled up.

“Well for starters the story of this!” Fred grins. “Are those rocket boots? On a cat?!”

Tadashi can’t help but smile, chuckling as he swipes at Fred’s hands. The nerd nimbly dodges out of the way, waggling the phone temptingly in Tadashi’s direction.

“Come on, I really gotta know,” Fred pleads, taking another step back. Tadashi stands and follows, eyes on the phone.

“If you must know, Aunt Cass made the mistake of telling Hiro how much trouble Mochi has had moving around the house lately,” he begins. The story distracts Fred, but not enough for him to get caught by Tadashi’s sudden lunge. Fred darts out of Tadashi’s office, leading the other man on a short chase through the lab.

“And that’s how Hiro figured out cold fusion!” Tadashi finishes the tale just as he finally catches Fred in a tackle, arms looping around Fred’s middle as both of them crash onto the reinforced, ultra-durable lab couch. In a strange twisty move that comes from taking far more interest in martial arts classes than most would think, Fred worms his way on top of Tadashi and sits, holding him down. The phone is thrust into Tadashi’s face.

“What about this one? Did your aunt say something about the waitresses not being fast enough?”

Tadashi laughs at the photo of a cake-splattered bakery, a sugary Hiro staring wide-eyed at the camera. He makes no move to get free as he starts talking.

One story leads to another, and ten minutes later Tadashi nods off in the middle of describing how Hiro’s latest attempt at a battle bot nearly ended in a buzz cut. Fred peers down at his sleeping friend, carefully shifting his weight off of Tadashi, and smirks triumphantly.

Mission accomplished.

Fred delicately slips a pair of comfortable noise-blocking headphones over Tadashi’s ears and sets off.

Sandwich for when Tadashi wakes up: check.

Phone back where he can find it: check.

Lab/Office…

Fred rolls his eyes. Tadashi is normally one of the neater scientists that he’s decided to adopt, but he does have his days. At the moment Tadashi’s office is a minefield of half-finished cups of coffee, random pieces of notebook paper, and a laptop precariously balanced on top of a stack of hard cover books. It takes only a few minutes for the coffee to be banished to the kitchen and the papers organized by date, as Tadashi is just the kind of neat freak to put the date on each of his papers. The laptop is relocated to a more secure location, and Fred gives a satisfied sigh at the slightly neater area.

Now if only he could convince his friends to not go on three-day-long coding binges everything would be perfect.

~O~

Gogo

Gogo snarls, hurling the latest edition of her bicycle wheel into the bin with more force than necessary. The disk bounces off the wall, spins across the floor, and nearly impales the couch. Snapping her gum viciously, Gogo stalks over to retrieve the disk. When she straightens up, wheel in hand, Fred is peering at her with excited eyes.

“What.” Her expression is flat, only a slight wrinkle in her brow betraying her level of frustration.

“I found this cool video, and I really need an expert opinion,” Fred grins, holding out his phone. Gogo eyes the thumbnail. Some stunt rider. “Can you please, please please please please PLEASE tell me if these are photoshopped? Because I swear some of the stuff this guy does breaks the laws of physics.”

Gogo glances between the wheel and the phone before chucking the disk over her shoulder with much better accuracy. It lands flawlessly in the bin with a sharp clang of metal on metal. Gogo vaults over the couch with one hand, landing neatly next to Fred as she plays the video. Ego boosting drivel, explaining the stunt, and Gogo frowns.

“That’s not gonna work,” she mutters. “His angles off, he’d need to…” She trails off, going into thinking mode, as the stunt plays. She scoffs. “Ha. There, you can see a slight glitch in the frame and his bike is held differently. Photoshopped. Probably did the stunt, failed, and then just spliced together a bunch of different attempts to make it look like he succeeded.” Fred punches the air.

“YES! I knew it! Okay, what about this one?” And before Gogo can even move Fred has another video pulled up. This one is real, and Gogo actually watches the whole thing, taking mental notes. The one after that is fake, but the editing is at least interesting. The fourth, however, is the killer. The rider has obviously never done a video before; the text is boring, his voice is monotone, and his bike looks utterly drab.

Gogo is asleep before they hit the five-minute mark, going from alert to out cold in half a second as she just tips over to prop her head on the arm rest. Fred turns off the video and stands. Gogo has a lot of stamina, but she’s like a kitten; going one minute, sleeping like the dead the next. That buys him at least an hour to sweep up the metal shavings and put all the paint cans away from the tea cups. Fred takes a moment to resist the urge to ruffle Gogo’s hair. She’s so cute like this, like a little kid curled up on the couch, but Fred also knows that putting his hand anywhere near her head is a great way to get a broken wrist. He putters off to straighten her lab instead. And when she wakes up with a fresh pack of gum next to her head, she’ll steal his beanie and ruffle his hair anyway. Because that’s how she is.

~O~

Wasabi

Wasabi stands in the middle of his lab space, tense. There are so many things to do. He has three different projects due within the next week for his classes, an exam in another, and a homework packet thicker than his thumb to work through for yet another class. Not to mention his personal projects, and he has to clean his dorm, and his lab is a wreck right now. Someone has come through stealing tools again and putting them back in the wrong drawer, so Wasabi has next to no clue what tools he has to work with to even begin to start on his work. He is so close to just screaming right now.

“Hey, Wasabi, I could use your help.” Wasabi claps his hands to his face and sighs deeply. And now Fred needs help. Not removing his hands from his face, Wasabi turns and walks into the lounge. When he finally looks up Fred is sitting on the edge of the couch, grinning.

“So, I remember you saying that this was your favorite movie, right? And I was out thrift-shopping, and I found some great deals, and I was digging through this one guy’s DVD collection when I found this!” Fred holds out an untouched DVD case, the title of the romantic comedy almost obscured by the number of “PRICE MARKED DOWN” stickers on the surface.

“I got it for a quarter,” Fred boasts. “But I didn’t check it for scratches, or make sure it isn’t a bootleg or anything. You wanna watch it with me and find out?” Wasabi considers.

“I’ve got a lot of work that I should be doing,” he hedges. “And my lab is a total mess.”

“I’ll let you peel off all the stickers,” Fred waggles the case temptingly. Wasabi huffs a laugh before sitting delicately on the couch, precisely in the center of right cushion.

“Fine, but only for a few minutes,” he says. Fred grins. At five minutes into the movie Wasabi has half of one sticker peeled away.

Ten minutes: two stickers.

Twenty minutes: two and a half stickers and Fred is plying him with graham crackers and celery sticks cut at precise angles all to the exact same length.

Thirty minutes: Wasabi has three stickers off and is trying to watch the movie, peel stickers, and eat all at the same time. It isn’t going well, and by forty minutes in Wasabi has put down the DVD case in favor of demolishing the snacks.

An hour in and he’s passed clean out on the couch, shoes placed at exactly ninety degrees to the coffee table and snack tray meticulously clean. There are still two stickers on the DVD case. Fred gets up quietly and clears the plates away, leaving the movie playing as he tiptoes into Wasabi’s lab. It looks like a few of the students thought that they’d mess around in Wasabi’s stuff; everything is just a little bit off, even the heavy lab table shoved an inch to the left. With a quick frown, Fred sets to work. He isn’t as picky as Wasabi when it comes to maintaining things, and he doesn’t have a hope of working out the other man’s system, but he can at least put things in the right drawers. Clearing the table reveals Wasabi’s planner, and the laundry list of tasks to do. Fred stares at it for a moment before taking out a clean sheet of paper and rewriting the assignment list, in order by earliest due date to last so that Wasabi has a better idea of when to begin when he wakes up. Satisfied, Fred wanders back out and reclaims his seat by Wasabi’s feet. He has to know if Jessica will admit her feelings for Cassey or if they’re both doomed to heartbreak.

~O~

Honey Lemon

Honey Lemon has been crouched over the same piece of paper for over an hour, with sporadic breaks to page frantically through textbooks and search up theoretical atomic structures on the internet. She’s so close to figuring out the perfect formula, and she knows it, but for some reason the structure of this molecule just. Isn’t. Cooperating. Lips pursed, Honey looks down at her notes once again. Perhaps if she moved the double bond off of the carbon and attached it here…

She twists the cap of her sparkly pink pen around and around as her mental picture of the molecule twists and turns. She can see clear as day how it’s supposed to be, how the bonds should fall just so, but something is throwing it off enough that any physical molecules she makes just fall to pieces or crystallize. With a huff of frustration, Honey Lemon is an inch away from hurling her pen at the wall when a smell drifts under her nose. Salty seaweed, the sweetness of tomato, and just a hint of raw fish.

“Oh Honey!” Fred pokes his head around the door. “Guess what I’ve got!” Shaking her head, Honey Lemon tries to ignore the smell.

“Not right now, Fred,” she turns away, bending back over her papers. “I’ve almost got it settled.” She can see Fred slump dramatically in the reflection in her pencil cup.

“Alright,” he says woefully. “I guess I’ll just have to eat this amazing sushi-pizza combo out here. All by myself.” He pauses thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I’ll even be able to eat the whole thing,” Fred thinks aloud. “Especially with this onigiri! Maybe Wasabi or Gogo will want some? No, they don’t like raw fish, seaweed, and pizza. And I got the really good kind, too, from that place by Rico’s. A shame; I guess what I don’t eat will go to waste.” He shrugs dramatically and Honey Lemon feels her stomach give a rumble. She sighs, defeated. Slapping her pen down on the table she turns and walks over to Fred.

“I may have been a bit hasty,” she admits, and Fred looks at her with one of those wide grins.

“No problem, Honey,” he says. “Sushi-pizza is all yours!” And it is, and Honey Lemon manages to eat three pieces, treated liberally with soy sauce, before she catches sight of the time.

“Two in the morning?!” She yelps. “Sorry, Fred, but I should probably go home and get some sleep, I’ve got an exam at noon tomorrow!”

“No prob,” Fred replies, already handing over her bag packed with her more recent notes. “Go get some sleep and then you can take down that test like Godzilla in a carboard city!” Honey Lemon can’t help but giggle at the mental image, and then her eyes widen.

“Fire,” she mutters, almost in a trance, and then she turns to Fred with a grin from ear to ear. “Fire! That’s it! Fred, you’re a genius!” She grabs Fred around the head and plants a loud kiss on his forehead. “See you tomorrow!” She cheers, already heading for the door. She’ll write down FIRE in her notes and go to sleep, and tomorrow she’ll ace her exam. But for now, Fred looks after her and chuckles, scrubbing at the back of his neck with one hand.

“Good night to you, too,” he mutters before shaking his head and packing up the rest of the food.

~O~

Hiro

Fred is scowling, which is highly unusual. Hiro has been locked in Tadashi’s old lab for more than a week, living off gummy bears and energy drinks as he rebuilds Baymax from the ground up. His professors received all his work for the next month at the beginning, so he can’t nag Hiro about homework, but it isn’t healthy. As much as Fred misses Baymax, he can wait for one day. Or just twelve hours, long enough to shower and sleep! Fred has tried everything. Comic books are left where he puts them, completely ignored. A favorite movie on TV gets a ‘maybe later’. Food of any kind is taking back into the lab, not even dishes returned. Challenges and tempting YouTube videos are left sitting. Nothing is working, and Fred, slumped at his desk with his hands buried in his hair, sighs.

It’s time to call in some reinforcements.

Putting his phone to his ear, Fred dials the number.

“Lucky Cat Café, how can I help you?”

“Hey Miss Cass,” Fred says tiredly.

“Fred! Sweetie! How are you, I haven’t heard from you in, like, ages!” Fred smiles despite himself. Cass is a treasure, and nothing will even convince him different.

“I’m good, but we’ve got a bit of a situation,” he admits.

“What’s up? Do you need some stronger coffee again, because one of my friends in the Navy just taught me this cool thing…” Fred laughs.

“Nah, Miss C, not coffee, it’s about Hiro.” Silence. Fred winces. Not good.

“Is he okay?” She sounds concerned.

“Yeah, he’s fine, but he’s been in the lab for, like, a week? And normally I’m pretty good at figuring out what makes people tick, so I can get them out no problem, but nothing is working,” he replies. A thoughtful hum.

“You’re a good person, Fred,” Ms. Cass says gently and Fred blushes. “And so, I’m going to tell you a secret that only two other people have ever known. The secret to getting Hiro out of his lab is…” Fred’s eyes widen and he grins.

“Awesome,” he leaps up and grabs his beanie. “Thanks, Miss Cass, I’ll have Hiro out of the lab in no time!”

“I know you will, Fred,” Cass chuckles. “I’ll talk to you later, sweetie; don’t forget to come by and get some donuts!” Fred says his good byes and hangs up, snatching an old book from the shelf. Hiro has his welding mask on and is working on Baymax’s new elbow joint when the lab door opens.

“Fred, I’m really not interested in,” he begins, already putting down the torch and flipping up his mask, and freezes.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Fred waves it off, rolling into the room in a swivel chair, pen behind his ear and book in his lap. “I’m just here to keep you company!” Hiro’s eyes remain locked on the book. Fred plucks the pen from behind his ear and opens it to a page in the middle, looking thoughtfully at the page.

“Hmmmm….” He hums, and Hiro breaks, walking over to peer over Fred’s shoulder.

“A one should go there,” he remarks, poking at the page with a finger. Fred frowns thoughtfully.

“No,” he says slowly, “Because there’s already a one in this square, see?”

“Oh yeah,” Hiro nods his understanding. He knows he’s made a mistake in stopping, because now that he’s not working he can feel his stomach churning in protest and how heavy his eyelids are, how it feels like there are anchors tied to his limbs. A few minutes later Fred feels the slight weight on his shoulder increase as Hiro straight up falls asleep on him and he grins.

Success.

Turning around, Fred, gathers the kid up in his arms, carrying him out to the lab couch and covering him with a blanket and head phones before going back to the lab. Hiro sleeps through Fred dragging out two trash bags of trash, three armloads of dishes, and enough crumpled paper to have killed a small forest. For all that he’s small, the kid makes more of a mess than Gogo.

~O~

And Fred

Fred scrubs at his eyes and forces himself to read the last page of his report. It’s a monster of a thing, twenty pages long, double spaced, with another three pages of references, and it’s due in…

Fred checks the clock.

It’s 11:30pm, so half an hour.

He can do this.

With a gusty sigh, Fred finishes the paragraph and reads through the works cited. He had meant to do this earlier, he really had, but then the other four had gotten caught up in lab work and if Fred hadn’t been there he’s pretty sure they would have resorted to cannibalism by now just to avoid leaving the lab. So, Fred handled all of them, then woke up Thursday morning and holed himself into the very nice SFIT library basement with a case or two of energy drinks and enough snacks to fuel an army. He’d spent the entirety of Thursday just gathering sources and hammering out his thesis, assembling a castle of reference books around him, and then Thursday night and Friday morning getting a rough draft written, with short naps here and there to keep him going. Friday night was for revising and writing a final draft, and now Fred is here, only ten minutes before the due date trying frantically to add one more source to his works cited.

And then it’s done.

It’s finished.

Fred saves the paper, saves it again just to be sure, and submits it online just as the clock strikes 11:59pm.

Upload successful.

Fred sighs heavily, relieved, and slumps against the wall. When he had gotten here the chairs had seemed comfortable enough, but somewhere along the way they made his butt fall asleep, so he transferred to the floor, using the chair as a place to put his laptop. And now he slumps over against the table leg, work done, still surrounded by reference books, snack wrappers, and empty drink cans. Maybe he can rest his eyes for just a few minutes…

Fred dozes. He’s vaguely aware of people finding him, of his protective shell of books and garbage being dismantled around him, and of being picked up to rest against a broad chest covered by a soft sweater. Movement, maybe a car, and then he’s tucked somewhere warm and soft and Fred falls into a much deeper sleep. He’s safe.

Fred wakes up with a groan, clutching at his aching head. He rolls over, and over, and over once more until he half-falls out of bed, clutching at the bedside table. There’s a glass of water, as usual, and Fred gratefully gulps it down. He’s still dressed, except for the tattered sneakers that are neatly placed beside his bed. Yawning, Fred cracks his neck and wanders down the hall towards the kitchen. Maybe Heathcliff won’t mind if he just grabs something simple for breakfast. As he tries to remember how he made it home from the library, Fred opens the door to the kitchen and stops in surprise.

Honey Lemon is over by the stove, poking something in the pan with a spatula, and Wasabi and Gogo are having a spirited discussion at the counter. Well, Wasabi is arguing that something isn’t sliced neatly enough and Gogo is pinning him with her best ‘and what are you gonna do about it?’ stare. Baymax is standing quietly in the corner, observing as Hiro searches through the refrigerator for orange juice. And in the other corner stands Heathcliff, the only indicator of his distress at seeing his precious kitchen ruined being the way his hands are gripped tightly together behind his back.

“What the heck?” Fred says, and most movement stops. Honey Lemon beams.

“Good morning!” She continues to poke the pan.

“What are you all doing here?” Fred asks.

“Bothering your butler,” Hiro responds immediately, finding the orange juice and putting the carton on the table.

“You passed out in the library,” Gogo explains.

“And lucky for you someone remembered that you hang around with us and came to get us,” Wasabi crosses his arms.

“So, we thought you could use some sleep and some food!” Honey Lemon finishes, tipping a perfectly made omelet onto a plate and handing it to Wasabi. The man drops a few green onions precisely onto the plate. They’re immediately displaced by tomatoes that Gogo adds, and Hiro puts the plate onto the table next to the glass of orange juice. And now Baymax is waddling forward, carefully avoiding the sharp kitchen appliances.

“While humans are able to operate on little sleep, it is not advisable. Regular sleeping and eating schedules are recommended by nine out of ten healthcare providers,” he says placidly, even as he physically picks Fred up, carries him to the chair, and puts him down. Fred blinks.

“Wow,” he says, looking around at all his friends. “Thanks, guys, you didn’t have to do this.”

“We wanted to,” Honey Lemon insists, sitting down beside him with a cup of tea and a tray of biscotti. “You’re always taking care of us, so returning the favor is the least we could do,” Wasabi adds, joining them with a mug of coffee with exactly three tablespoons of cream and a teaspoon of sugar. Gogo just stares into Fred’s eyes and pops her gum loudly, a cup of jasmine tea by her elbow. Hiro takes the chair next to her, already half-through a glass of orange juice. Fred feels something in his chest go all soft and melty.

“Aw,” he smiles. “Thanks, guys. I really appreciate it.” He takes a bite of complete. Hiro finishes his orange juice.

“Not to mention that the lab is a mess. Not even Wasabi can find anything,” he adds, and everyone groans. Fred just laughs, because his friends are the best, and continues to eat as the Big Hero 6 chat and sip their drinks. It’s a good way to start the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a random text post on tumblr and it just wouldn't get out of my head, so enjoy!


End file.
